The present invention relates broadly to a sight apparatus, and in particular a video airdrop sight apparatus.
The state of the art of target sighting apparatus is well represented and alleviated to some degree by the prior art apparatus and approaches which are contained in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,742,812 issued to Woodworth et al. on Jul. 3, 1973; and 4,015,905 issued to Lloyd on Apr. 5, 1977.
The Woodworth et al patent describes a method of aiming a gyrostabilized television guided missile from an aircraft at a ground target. The pilot places the desired target within the gunsight of his aircraft, confirms in his cockpit monitor that the target is indeed within the tracking gate of the missile, then launches the missile.
The Lloyd patent is directed to an improved target sighting device for use on moving vehicles, such as military aircraft, and in which a vertically-disposed C-shaped elevation gimbal is supported for rotary movement about an elevation axis at the center of the gimbal to enable a vertically extending mirror on the gimbal to be aimed toward a target along a line of sight at one side of the gimbal, for reflection of target information along such axis and through the open end of the gimbal to a fixed optical pickup assembly. The improvement resides in the support of the open end of the gimbal by a ring bearing encircled by an annular flex pivot assembly that limits the extent of rotary aim-influencing vibration that can be transmitted from the exterior of the device to the gimbal and mirror circumferentially through the ring bearing by friction.
In the prior art, during visual meteorological conditions (VMC), cargo aircraft were experiencing problems with accurate and precise airdrops of equipment and materials. Part of the problem stems in fact from the inability of flight crews to accurately drop or jettison cargo from the aircraft using solely a visual fix of the computed airdrop release point. Other factors which further complicate the airdrop task, are meteorological conditions (VMC) due to positional errors which accumulate during inertial navigation system (INS) visual position updates, visual fix before timed run-in to computed airdrop release point (CARP), time spent for actual load ejection at CARP, and printing variances in maps used for computing CARP. The present invention provides a stabilized platform and a calibrated viewing means to accurately fix the release points for cargo airdrops.